Archive for May 8, 2014

Normally I do one post a day, but I could NOT wait to share this. Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have engineered a bacterium whose genetic material includes an added pair of DNA “letters,” not found in nature. The cells of this new bacterium can even replicate the unnatural DNA bases more or less normally, for as long as the molecular building blocks are supplied to the bacterium.

I don’t even really know where to start with this, so let’s start with the basics, normally in nature, everything, everywhere [that we know of] has four different letters in it’s DNA, A-T, G-C, that is is and they only go together in that order A with T and G with C, never will you see a T with a G for example.

Like this:

Part of getting an education isn’t about learning what to think, it is about learning how to find good information. When it comes to scientific literature [especially on-line], it’s hard to separate the good from the bad if you don’t know what to look for. With the emergence of pseudoscience in the mainstream I think it’s important to go over a few red flags when it comes to claims being made.